FICO Holds Mortgage Score Pricing at $10, Wells Fargo Downgrades on Lost Earnings Upside
FICO sits 28% above its 52-week low of $586.05 on light trading volume (0.3× avg).
Summary
FICO said Friday it will keep mortgage credit-score pricing at $10 for lenders in its new Preferred Program, which bundles the traditional FICO score with FICO Score 10T in exchange for lenders committing to FICO for all applicable credit checks. Wells Fargo downgraded the stock to Equal Weight from Overweight on Monday and cut its price target to $735 from $800, arguing FICO gave up a key profit lever by not raising prices. The analysts had expected a meaningful price increase because lenders would likely keep paying, and they now see limited earnings upside; they trimmed their FY2027 adjusted EPS estimate to $48.02 from $49.65. Shares fell 6.9% to $758 on Monday and are down 54% this year, on track for the worst annual performance on record. The pricing move is a defensive play against VantageScore, whose 4.0 product costs less than half of FICO's $10, and it follows FHFA Director Bill Pulte's push to open mortgage underwriting to VantageScore and Rocket Mortgage's adoption of it as its preferred model. BMO called mortgage pricing the most important earnings lever and said holding it flat forfeits a major fiscal 2027 profit opportunity.
At the time of this announcement, FICO was trading at $751.53 on NYSE in the Finance sector, with a market capitalization of approximately $16.2B. The 52-week trading range was $586.05 to $1,858.91. This news item was assessed with negative market sentiment and an importance score of 7 out of 10. Source: Dow Jones Newswires.